Editorial: A no-win situation

U.S. military aircraft returned to the air over Iraq, bombing militants and dropping relief supplies to embattled members of a minority sect.

President Barack Obama in December 2011 announced the end of the U.S. war in Iraq, long after his predecessor, George W. Bush, infamously and inaccurately declared "Mission Accomplished." Yet Obama this month sent the U.S. military back into Iraq, authorizing airstrikes against surging Islamic militants while promising the American people that he would not send in U.S. ground troops.

But wars don't follow timetables or government plans. Neither does nation-building. Obama was being honest with the American people when he warned that the renewed U.S. involvement in Iraq could last for months.

Iraq's infant democracy, which was created following the U.S.-led coalition's overthrow of Saddam Hussein, so far has proved incapable of ensuring the country's security and of overcoming its deep-rooted ethnic and religious divisions. Violence did not magically end when the U.S. troops left; and this year's resurgence of militant Islamists, in the form of the Islamic State, took the U.S. and the Iraqi government by surprise.

The Islamic State, which appears to have no qualms about its use of brutality, forced tens of thousands of Yazidis to flee to a mountaintop, where they lack food and water, and has threatened to massacre any members of the religious sect who descend.

Given the barbarous zeal of the Islamic State, the threat of genocide is real. The international community was compelled to act, and the airdrops of food, water and other relief supplies are a needed humanitarian response.

The U.S. airstrikes may be justified as well. But recent history shows the outcome of those missions is unpredictable. The U.S. conducted full-fledged wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and airstrikes in Libya, yet those countries remain rife with violence and government instability.

President Obama and the U.S. are caught in a no-win situation. The United States cannot solve the violence engulfing Iraq, but neither can we ignore it. A civilized world must stand up to barbarism and confront brutality.